At the gate another couple were wrapping up and leaving... they seemed to have a guide with them and without missing a beat he began talking to us instead.
He also would not stop... he kind of kept his distance, and would interject a sentence or two here and there as we walked. Despite Kyle nodding and not engaging it soon became apparent that we were On His Turf, and as there were literally no other guests on the entire castle grounds, we were his "guests". So we ended up going with the flow, and had a guide here.
As we walked his rattling off of the spaces we could clearly see on the much better signage in places ceased. He then actually started pointing out things we never would have noticed otherwise like the indentations here in the rock, and broken bits of pottery around. He insisted he always found old coins, but we were not so lucky today. He blamed the lack of rain.
We also saw snails in the rockwork, showing how far materials had traveled to get there.
At some point during the tour we came to "his" room in the castle, where he had various belongings. He said he comes every day to give tours, and said he had toured all kinds of famous people here. I am still unsure who exactly he was... maybe he is indeed a person of some note as he said? Or perhaps a Bedouin who made the area his home. In the end it was fun listening to him, and even though he tried to gift me a piece of a woman's necklace we found I couldn't bear to take it home (it belongs in a museum!) and left it behind. I did accept his gift of sage tea, much to Kyle's horror, as it had been boiled and I assumed was safe enough. He drank a tiny bit as well after he saw me go for it... in for a penny, in for a pound? Luckily we were both fine afterwards and dutifully gave him a nice tip for his efforts. We spent over an hour touring around this one.
We made it back to the gate just as more sucke... I mean tourists arrived (was that perfectly timed by him? Had he seen them coming?) and he effortlessly switched from us to them just as he had when we arrived. Happy with our tour, we asked the guard to call the cart and he started at us as if we had two heads. He insisted he did not know the number and that was not a thing he had ever done for anyone. Angrily we both marched the long way back to our car, feeling like suckers anew for having paid for both ways.
When we passed by the trailer where the golf carts are, not intending to get into it at all, the man who had driven us ran out and yelled at us asking why we had not called? With more frustration than either of us thought possible we yelled back the guy didn't have his number and refused to call as we stomp stomped by. It was just so bewildering what was going on... he kept yelling it was impossible, he has his number and that's not right, to which Kyle said go ask him yourself! Onwards to Petra!
I hemmed and hawed at the hotels on this trip a LOT as I am very sensitive to cigarette smoke, and that is extremely popular here. I couldn't find definitive answers that every room was nonsmoking or not, but had reached out and been told every room at both the Movenpick and Petra Guest House were nonsmoking by them. Between the two I decided to go with the Guest House as it was the closest one to Petra, and has a really neat Cave Bar built into the rocks. On arrival we went through security again as we had for every hotel in Egypt and here, and were told good news! You've been upgraded to a nicer room!
...I admit I had by this point completely forgotten any concern I'd had. With the exception of a few brief moments smoke just hadn't been an issue at all. There was smoke inside at the Marriot Mena house as they have cigarette trays in the elevator lobbys on each floor, but that was it... until here.
The upgraded room honestly looked the same as what I had booked, with the "bonus" that it was once again very very far from the lobby. As high up as you could get in fact, at least four sets of stairs and I felt terrible for the attendant who carried every single piece of luggage we had at once up them. We desperately wanted to help but he insisted... >_< After he was tipped and departed I walked towards the bathroom and realized I was smelling smoke. If this was a nonsmoking room guests absolutely smoke and then put their clothes in the closet next to the bathrom because it REEKED. I considered marching back to the front desk but it was not very noticeable at all from the bed, and I was worried they would all be like that so I ended up putting up with it. We just avoided the closet like the plague... since we were here two nights I did unfortunately end up with a migraine and so I did not partake of any drinks in the Cave Bar.
We instead chose a table further away from it, and Kyle ordered a beer while I stuck with an N/A drink. They had a lot of drinks here, despite being a mostly dry Muslim country.
